An Autumn Night
by adahleida
Summary: Mal gets into a tough spot that hits hard and very close to home. What really goes on inside that tortured mind of his?


An Autumn Night

**Title:** An Autumn Night  
**Author:** adahleida  
**Summary:** Mal gets into a tough spot that hits hard and very close to home. What really goes on inside that tortured mind of his?  
**Rating:** R!  
**Warnings: **Dark! Includes violence and some gore.  
**Disclaimer:** I own nothing! Firefly and all its characters do not belong to me. *sigh*  
**Word Count:** 7125  
**Beta Reader:** Just me, myself, and I, I'm afraid… If anyone spots any errors please point them out to me!  
**Translations:**  
Delun – Male Chinese name; means virtuous order.  
fàng pì – bullshit  
dong-ma? – understand?  
Dé le? - all right; that's enough;

**Preface/Author's Notes:**

Sorry it's taken me so long to post another story. Being a new writer I'd hoped to post something new sooner, but existing in this story's headspace was really tough so I dragged my heels a lot writing it. For a character that's usually so funny, I'm always surprised what a dark and tortured soul Mal really is. It was hinted at briefly in the series, especially in a few of the deleted scenes that were on the DVDs, but it was never really made obvious. I'm guessing it's something Joss Whedon would have explored further if the evil powers that be hadn't cancelled the show so early. Anyways, I was reading some haiku and came across the little gem by Basho that opens this story, and it got me thinking about who might need to hear it the most, and Mal popped into my head. From there the urge to explore the demons that haunt him snowballed, and this was born.

I realize that haiku is traditionally in a 5-7-5 format, but many poets are starting to break from that tradition. (Mathemaku for example!) Also many Japanese haiku are forced to lose the official format in translation in order to preserve the heart of the poem. Since the Basho one I use is an example of this, I thought I could get away with not using the traditional format in the ones I wrote for River. These are my first haiku, and I'm not much of a poet to begin with, so I apologize if they're not that great.

Oh, and by the way: the fox in this story was a real. It happened almost 6 years ago now, and it's stayed in my nightmares ever since.

* * *

An autumn night;  
Don't think your life didn't matter.  
-Basho

Mal liked being on the bridge of his ship at night. After a day such as this it became his refuge. He could be alone, the small space guaranteed privacy. He could be alone in his bunk too, sure, but on his bridge he could see the stars. At night when the crew was peacefully off ship in the worlds of their dreams, a particular stillness overtook the little Firefly. Perhaps it was those times when no people were bustling about inside her that she could most be herself. Calm. Quiet. Cool. Peaceful. Serenity.

It was cold on the bridge, but Mal didn't mind. Sitting in what was normally Wash's spot, he wrapped a woolen blanket around himself, brown and rough and scratchy and warm, put his feet on the console in front of him, and set his thousand yard stare out into the stars. He was trying his best not to think. A bottle of Kaylee's wine was already half emptied but still not helping. Looking long into the blackness of space and seeing himself reflected back, thoughts came unbidden and uncontrollable: flickering through his mind and tracing their progress in the flinches across his face, the shudders travelling through his body. A young soldier, starved near to death, gangrene rotting away his leg, begging Mal to kill him. Two bodies, torn and hacked into shreds by enemy solders' knives, by enemy soldiers' bare hands, identifiable only by the two brown coats left neatly folded beside each pile of body parts. The hundreds of men who he had fought alongside: the men he'd known sometimes for weeks, sometimes for mere hours before they were gunned down by enemy fire. The multitudes of faceless ghost-men who in death still stood around him, stood to attention with their uniforms in perfect detail and their faces nonexistent. Haunting him to remember their names, mocking him with their sheer number.

He convulsed and gasped, flinging himself to his feet and shaking his head violently. The faceless army disappeared from his bridge. He sought Kaylee's bottle and drained the rest of it, slowly settling back into his chair.

* * *

It was supposed to be simple. Why couldn't things ever be simple? The middle-class parents of a darling teenage girl had traced her abductors to a tiny backwater planetoid, a rock so insignificant there was no local police force to speak of. And the Alliance, well, they had so much more important things to do than rush off to the outer rim and track down a single kidnap victim on a miniscule world. In their desperation Ruth and Stephen Withers had turned to a disreputable man named Badger, a man who had those unsavory connections that suddenly became so desirable when one needed guns for hire. And Badger knew just the bunch that would fall for such a hard luck sob story.

"Remind me again why I'm not shootin' you where you stand?" The captain was nose to nose with Badger, who had somehow managed to find them on one of their rare resupplying missions to an inner planet.

"Ah, she's a lovely gel, barely fourteen. Ripped away from her parents like that, such a tragedy, and them with no experience travelling the outer rings, no way of reaching the world they spent a small fortune tracing her to. Knew you lot wouldn't be able to say no to such an honourable calling!" Badger held up a picture of an angelic blue-eyed blonde-haired girl of cookie-cutter, inner-planet, Alliance-all-the-way perfection.

"Mmmm yes, that's a mighty tale of woe you've told us" Mal said, "but am I not right in thinking you've given us no reason to trust you in our last two dealings? And now you're expectin' us to come back for thirds?"

"Come now mate, thanks to our last successful enterprise I've gained a notch in this here society as a businessman. You get the job done, people knows this. You're a valuable commodity, for the moment anyways. Why would I try to upset that?"

"Inner planet job, money'd probably be _real_ good" grinned Jayne. Mal ignored him.

"Awww cap'n, she's such a lovely little one, and if there's a chance we can help… well we can't just leave her!" Kaylee had been standing behind the captain's left shoulder along with Zoe and Jayne, listening to the exchange. Mal turned to face her. She had taken the photo from Badger and was staring at it with her Kaylee-patented expression of horror, sadness, and empathy. The captain was never able to say no to his mechanic when she got like that, and he caved.

"Gorammit girl, alright, we'll see what we can do." A joyous smile covered Kaylee's face and she leapt up to hug her captain. He tolerated the affection and then turned to Zoe.

"Go meet with these parents, check them out. See if the story seems legit. Take Jayne so's to let them know what they're getting' into if they're misleadin' us in any way."

"Aye, Sir."

"Captain, might I be allowed to accompany them?" Everyone turned in unison to look at Shepherd Book. As usual, no one in the group had been aware of his silent feline approach from the market behind them. "If these people are who they say they are, they may want the comfort of a Shepherd. And if they aren't, their reaction to me should be equally telling."

Mal met his eyes and understood. The Shepherd's unspoken past could tell them everything they needed to know about these folk, assuming they were of Alliance ilk. He nodded his agreement, and Zoe, Jayne, and Book followed a pleased snuffling Badger down the walkway, towards their next job.

* * *

Ruth and Stephen Withers lived in a house of glass. Floor to ceiling windows tinted at the touch of the sun's rays to provide climate controlled perfection, not to mention a lovely view of the lake and city below. Since arriving, Jayne had already knocked over two highly expensive Ming vases and a piece of inscrutable crystal art that was supposedly Mrs. Withers' award for "most innovative use of glass in design". She was a famous and well respected architect; Mr. Withers was a doting househusband. Jayne was ordered to wait outside.

The parents of young Ellie Withers hardly noticed the wanton destruction of their property: they were far more shattered than the vases on their living room carpet. Zoe and Book sat at the clear-glass living room table and watched in stillness how the Withers trembled as they clutched each other's hands, how they drew their chairs in close to one another, how they leaned in and pressed their shoulders together as they sat down: compressed into each other from the weight of agony. Book did not recognize them for anything more than what they claimed they were. Zoe, who was a far more perceptive judge of character than her usual demeanor implied, could see through them quite plainly. There was no deception on the part of the Withers, nothing at all about them except loss.

Haltingly, the Withers choked out the story of how their brilliant little angel, tasting independence for one of the first times in her life, was permitted to go to an evening play with only schoolmates for company. Apparently the social price for these friends' companionship was sneaking into a manga-pub afterwards for some youthful rebellion. Ellie excused herself to go to the bathroom, where according to witnesses a large Caucasian man in his late forties or early fifties had simply put his arm around the petite young girl, dragged her outside into a hovercraft, and disappeared into the sky. The local police had traced the craft's signature to a nearby dockyard, where it disappeared again at a docking port whose registry indicated an Arkan 837 Transport Tube on ground at the time. From there they believed the girl was taken off-world, and that's where the investigation was slammed up against a wall of jurisdictional fàng pì. In their desperation, Ellie's parents had bribed a young and underpaid dockyards traffic controller to trace the ship's pulse beacon. According to their source, the ship was still parked on Poros, a planetoid in the outer rim.

Book said a prayer to comfort the parents, and then he and Zoe collected Jayne and went back to the ship. The crew arranged themselves around the table in the galley and listened to their report.

"It'll be nice to have an honest paycheque for a change!" was Wash's comment.

"Dear, there's a real possibility we're going to have to kill people to get this girl back."

"Oh." Wash looked at his wife, crestfallen.

"Still, Wash has a point, this is the most honest work we've had in awhile" said Kaylee. "We can't let the parents come with us though, they'll be sure to recognize Simon and River."

"Dark clouds. Absorbed by sky. A rose dies."

There was a pause of silence as everyone turned to look at River.

"Well now," said the captain, "at least she's puttin' her crazy talk into haiku. Doc I do believe that could be considered an improvement." Simon just shook his head and softly brushed a strand of hair away from his sister's face.

"We won't need the Withers" said the captain. "They've already given us all the useful information they have."

Inara turned her head graceful and swanlike to look at Mal. "I take it this means you'll accept the job?" Mal gave a brief curt nod in the affirmative.

"In that case I'd like to remain here. I can use the time to see some additional clients."

Mal opened his mouth as if to say something to her, but then the light in his eyes shifted. He nodded curtly once more and then addressed his crew.

"Alright, Zoe, send a wave out to Jin Li. He should know who's settled on Poros, who the law is and the like. Get the lay of the land. Wash, get us fuelled up and underway. We'll leave as soon as we can, the longer we take the less of a chance that girl has. Book, Kaylee, check the broadcasts, see if we can get a better description of who we're going up against. Jayne, polish your guns. We'll need 'em." He paused and found himself without anything else to say, so he turned and left the room. The crew scrambled off into action.

* * *

The Captain clumsily gathered the wool blanket around him again. It had fallen to the floor in his attempt to escape his ghost army. He reached for bottle number two of Kaylee's wine. Before opening it he held it in his hands and stared at it as if it would speak to him. Kaylee was the closest thing he felt to having a daughter. The crew was his family now. He opened the bottle and winced down another mouthful. Still, his mind would not stop thinking.

Family, his mind hummed. He thought of his mother and the farm she ran while he was growing up. He never knew his father. The man had left early on. An image of his mother's face flashed before his mind's eye: the expression she'd held when he asked about his paternity. His mother had done fine on her own. She had a presence about her, a subtle approach to guiding those around her backed by a strength iron to her core. Running the farm had been a full time job and the most Mal ever got from his mother was a talent for leadership.

Multitudes of faces followed his mother's in quick succession: all the farm hands who'd raised him right alongside the calves and lambs. When Sun Ai's face appeared in his flicker tape of memories the stream diverged and Mal found himself standing beside the trout lake. Sun Ai was next to him, laughing, holding out a string with a hook and worm on the end of it. Fishing lessons. _Uncle_: Mal's brain categorized. The scene changed. A young woman about Kaylee's age, covered in dirt and carrying a spade, walking back to her bunk after planting rows of seeds. Annika. _Big sister. _A large woman, muscular in the arms and back, demonstrating how to wrestle a steer to the ground for branding. Caroline. _Aunt._

Before Mal even realized his mind had been treading on such dangerous ground, his thoughts slipped inexorably towards Delun. _Father?_ Delun was a tall man, broad shouldered and big boned. Even in his mid-thirties he had developed a sizeable beer belly, and to top it all off he wore a handlebar moustache and trimmed beard against his rapidly receding hairline. Delun had been chief hand for fifteen years before he left to fight for the Independents. He had taken Mal under his wing, carried him from toddler to young man. For years Mal had believed it divine fate that Delun had been there to teach Mal one of his first life's lessons. Afterwards, despite the harshness of the lesson, or perhaps because of it, Mal had gone to Delun the most for advice, for guidance. _Father! _

Mal tried to stop it then but the memory was already seeded in the core of his brain and it grew and grew and flooded his body, beyond his control. Six years old, at six he'd found a fox on the road in front of the farm, a fox trying to get up and so desperately destroyed with its back end streamed across the highway and its front end desperately trying to move itself to shelter. Mal had screamed and screamed and Delun had come, he had been closest. Mal screamed for the fox's life, but all that played out in front of him beyond his control were two paws: two paws that should have been four dragging whatever was still connected to them, scrabbling to escape as Delun's sledgehammer comes up into the air to swing down and end its so-called misery but the desperation to escape is so sad that sad doesn't begin to cover it and slips into the horrified and overwhelming, especially as the last moments of an innocent life are lived without understanding of how or why it is hurt so much to the core of itself. The fear alone is enough to die but it is the hobbling attempt to live that brings about the desire to scream and vomit and cry, scream at the agony of it all, all at once.

Standing abruptly, Mal glanced around the room and then grabbed a bucket half full of oil that was sitting beneath the flight console. He vomited his hero's dinner into it, heaving and retching long after his stomach had emptied. Sitting down again, he shakily placed the bucket beside his seat. The memory's strength began to fade, and then it mingled and merged with what had passed only a few hours ago. He wrapped himself into the blanket again as his chest constricted but no tears came. It was too, too much. Too much to breathe, or even move.

* * *

Dust and dead leaves flew high in the air as Serenity settled her feet onto Poros. There was a small welcoming committee waiting for the crew as they lowered the cargo bay ramp and disembarked. Three men stood in front of a large carriage attached to four horses. The crew ended up in a huddle at the foot of the ramp for a moment, regarding them. Then Mal emerged from the group and outstretched his hand.

"Captain Malcolm Reynolds. We appreciate your comin' to meet us."

"I'm Magistrate Arthur Ramsey, pleasure to meet you, Captain. This is Sheriff Gordon Bakan and Jimmy Harris. Harris here owns one of the larger farms just outside the township, Elos. He's volunteered to be your guide and driver. We thank you for coming to assist us with this matter. The presence of these men in our community has been most distressing."

Zoe stepped forward. "What can you tell us about them?"

Sheriff Bakan glanced at Harris for a moment. "Perhaps we should discuss this on the road, it'll be dark soon."

Mal nodded the affirmative. They would speak inside the carriage, out of earshot of civilians. Turning towards his crew he gave a short sharp nod of his head towards the carriage and commanded "All right, let's load up!"

The crew, still standing in one solid mass, started forward. There was the usual bumping of elbows and confusion as everyone tried to enter the carriage at once, and then sorted out who they would be sitting next to and across from and the like before settling, tucking in feet and feathers like hens on a line. Harris climbed up to his seat on the roof and clucked at the horses, and they lurched off on their way.

Over the clack of the wheels, Sherriff Bakan spoke. "We're not sure how many men there are. Elos is the only township on Poros, the rest is farmland. They've settled in an abandoned house on almost the exact opposite side of this planetoid. They come and go as they please. I'm the only law to speak of and I have no means to stop them on my own. They and their ships are always heavily armed. They… there's been…" He paused for a moment and stared out the window. Mal recognized the look and didn't press the man, instead waiting for him to find his words.

"They leave the bodies out, wherever they please. They know there'll be no consequence. One was lying in the middle of a road… and… so many injuries we couldn't determine the exact cause of death. Our doc said that none of them had been sexually assaulted but… not even Reavers show this much creativity in what they do. At least Reavers are quicker about it." He gathered his breath and straightened up in his seat, remembering his job and returning to facts. "There's approximately 14 days between each of their landings and a new body turning up, so we believe they keep their victims alive for at least 10 days. Your girl, if they have her, should have about 5 days left. Our doctor has autopsy reports if you'd like to see them. We've buried the bodies in the local cemetery. We weren't able to identify any of them."

"Thank you" Book intoned. "I believe your efforts and respect for these unfortunate souls will be felt by them, and by the Lord."

"What is your plan?" the magistrate asked.

"Don't rightly know, as of yet" said the captain. "If the Sherriff here would be willing to show us where their house is, we'll have a look. Reckon we can form a plan from there."

"Are you sure you want to approach them openly, Captain? Let them know you're coming?"

"Reckon it's the only way to get the lay of the land. Can't think of a much worse thing than goin' in blind."

"Sunbeams in the trees. A horse sleeps. Water running."

Both the magistrate and the sheriff turned to River, eyebrows raised. She gracefully tilted her head to rest her temple on Simon's shoulder, and smiled her eerily delighted smile. The men exchanged a quick glance then settled their gazes in unison onto the Captain, uncertain.

"This is my sister. She's harmless." Simon spoke in a rush.

"And what's your name, son?"

"I'm Simon."

"He's our medic" Zoe interjected. She shot a meaningful glare at Mal, and then began the introductions that he had overlooked. "I'm Zoe, first mate. My husband Wash is our pilot. This here's our mechanic Kaylee, across from her is Jayne. Beside him is Shepherd Book. Simon's little sister is called River."

"A preacher? And a child? I must say, Captain, you have a most unusual crew. I trust… well that is to say… will _all_ of you be… participating in this girl's rescue?"

"_No!_" Simon barked over Mal's reply to the magistrate. "River will in no way be participating in _any_ dangerous schemes _whatsoever_." He eyed Mal.

Mal met the glare with a look of wide-eyed simplicity. "Don' you worry now Simon, we'll make sure not a hair is hurt on her crazy little head."

"Our ship is our home as well as our means to a living, magistrate. Everyone's got a place here, though some's jobs are different than others" Zoe explained.

The magistrate opened his mouth as if to ask something, but paused and then simply nodded. For the rest of the journey to Elos there was only hesitant small talk wrapped in silence.

* * *

As it turned out, only Zoe and Mal approached the house. It seemed the grey and empty shell of a once glorious home. Perched imposingly in a clearing on top of a large foothill, at least a dozen rooms would have views of either the mountain range behind or the farmland in the valley below. Now those views were framed by broken shards of glass and pieces of torn plastic. Wooden slats on the floor of the verandah were beginning to warp and curve upwards, and many of the balusters were rotting away or missing completely. An old-fashioned swing set, something a farmer and his wife may have sat on while watching the sun dip into the valley, hung by only one end on a rusted chain. Children might have once chased each other through the large yard; now boulders and rusted pieces of long-dead machinery were scattered from the porch's edge to the treeline. A narrow footpath ran from the edge of the yard through the dense forest and to the road at the base of the hill.

"Don't much like the look of this one, Cap'n." Zoe's large eyes blinked and glanced toward Mal. They were standing shoulder to shoulder about ten feet from the house, pistols drawn, looking up the steep slope at three men who had rifles lazily pointed in their direction.

"Were we expectin' anythin' else?" Mal returned her glance and gave a shrug that crinkled the folds of his brown jacket, before quickly returning his attention to the target his pistol was facing. He was about to speak when the target beat him to it.

"This here ain't your house. Ain't your land neither. We don't like no visitors, and we sure don't like no _trespassers_." The man standing on the far left aimed his shotgun directly at Mal's gut.

"My name is Malcolm, this here is Zoe. Now, we're not looking for a fight, and we certainly don't mean to trespass. We're just looking for some old friends of ours. Used to live in these parts. Would you happen to know where the folks who lived here are now?"

"House was empty when we got here." barked another of the men. "Claimed it as ours, free and legal."

"Alright then, sorry to have troubled you. No need for guns now, we'll be on our way."

For a moment nobody moved. Then Zoe spoke.

"He's right. We don't want any trouble. We'll be lowering our guns now, and we'll leave peaceably."

In perfect unison Mal and Zoe slowly lowered their weapons to point at the ground, and began taking steps backward down the dirt pathway. The men watched warily and didn't lower their weapons, but made no move to attack either. Neither Mal nor Zoe took their eyes off the men on the front porch until they were safely out of sight in the woods.

Mid-way down the hill, Sheriff Bakan and Jayne emerged from the forest on either side of the path. The four hastily walked down the narrow trail with at least one of them looking behind at all times to ensure they weren't being followed. Once they reached the road Mal gave a low whistle and the carriage emerged from around a corner.

When they were safely back on board Book clasped the Captain's shoulder and spoke. "Well? What did you see?"

"They have her. I'm sure of it."

"I agree Cap'n. Somethin's just not right about the place. Gives me a feeling." Zoe crossed her powerful forearms and ducked her chin towards her chest as she thought. "There's more than three of 'em around, obviously. Well armed. Don't like that we'll have to approach from low ground either. This one's going to be tricky."

"Captain?" the Sheriff asked. "Are you certain this is wise? Perhaps if we waited one of the neighboring planets, or another ship, would be willing to assist...?"

Mal looked at the Sheriff, looked at him and looked right through him.

"No. We wait that long, we'll be rescuing a corpse. We'll go in as soon as they're asleep tonight."

* * *

The world was exploding around him as Mal charged toward the house. Leaping over rocks and fallen branches, ducking between bullets and dodging energy blasts, he crossed the clearing and scrambled the uphill slope until he reached the porch on the side of the house. Jayne and Zoe were doing a good job holding off the men emerging from the building and the surrounding forest, one after the other after the other, Jesus there must be at least a dozen of them, he couldn't tell, the spaces between the explosions were so small. He bent low against the base of the verandah and caught his breath momentarily before risking standing up to check his surroundings. With the Sheriff and Book just behind the forest wall providing cover fire and a sizeable distraction in the form of Jayne's hand grenades, Jayne and Zoe were slowly making their way across the clearing and up towards the captain. Mal looked in the opposite direction and fired a quick shot. A man rounding the corner of the porch never even saw him. Just went down hard. Mal leaped and grabbed the top railing and hoisted himself up ungracefully. Gun held at his side, he slammed himself up against the wall of the house and began to walk slowly towards the back. When he reached the corner he lowered himself again and peered carefully around the wall. He saw two guards on the back door. Without moving from his crouched position he lifted his pistol and shot them both. There were still dozens more, he felt, in the yard surrounding and in the house. _'They must have sent for help'_ he thought in a stopped moment of time, before plunging headlong into the house.

The back door opened into a large kitchen. The room was empty and eerily still. He walked through it and into the front sitting room where he shot two men who were firing out the front windows. The furniture had long since been ripped into kindling, he noticed, as he scanned for people, corners, doorways, threats. And the girl. Where were they keeping the girl? Pantry. He burst into the pantry, waving his gun at old cans of beans. Downstairs bathroom. No, empty as well. Aha, staircase. She must be upstairs, no one down here that ain't already dead. He scaled the steps three at a time to meet a hallway with a row of doors. He should wait for backup, a thought told him, wait for Zoe and Jayne, but it was stuffed down as he opened room after room, finding four bedrooms and one bathroom and three men who were dead before they could turn to see who was opening the door behind them.

As he was entering the fifth room there was a gun blast and a body went down behind him heavy and loud. He turned, Jayne was standing at the end of the hallway, protecting his back and shouting at him that Zoe was downstairs holding off their adversaries, and the girl wasn't to be found down there. Mal scanned the hallway frantically, scanned his memories frantically. They might have killed the girl already, where is she, where _is_ she, where would they _hide_ her? What was he missing? What was he _missing?_

The house had a sloped roof. The house had a sloped roof and that meant an attic. He looked along the ceiling of the hallway and there it was in the middle: a faint crack of light, and a metal rung for a pull-down staircase. He caught Jayne's eye and motioned towards what he'd found. Both men silently and uniformly approached the light from opposite ends of the hallway, meeting beneath it in the middle. Jayne reached up, looked at Mal. Mal dropped his empty pistol and drew a second one, then nodded. Jayne pulled, the collapsible staircase came crashing down to the floor, and Mal followed the barrel of his pistol up the steps instantaneously, seemingly not even touching them as he ran.

He scanned quickly and there was nothing. For a moment he saw no one and nothing and thought the room was empty but then he sees them. The girl, Ellie, tied to a chair, bloody and writhing against her binds and screaming through her gag, and a man cowering behind her, holding a gun to her temple. He drew his pistol up level with the man's forehead and spoke.

"Let her go."

The man blinked and stared wide-eyed at Mal, but remained motionless.

"Your men are all dead," said Mal, "or will be very shortly. Let her go, or I will shoot you. Kill her, and your brains will be oozin' on the floor half a second later. You've got no way out of this alive 'cept to do as I say. Now. Let her go."

The man continued the staring act for a moment while flexing his jaw as if he was trying to get it to work. Then he spoke.

"Malcolm?"

Outwardly Mal gave no reaction other than a slight widening of his eyes, a steeling of the shoulders. It was his turn to remain silent.

"Malcolm Reynolds! Is that you, son?" The man was standing up behind Ellie, slowly, pistol still pressed onto the top of her skull. Her eyes shifted rapidly from Mal to her captor and back again as she tried to make sense of their exchange through a fog of panic.

"Well mercy to the heavens that be! Don't you recognize me, son?"

Mal looked at the man speaking to him. He saw the bald head, the height, the broad shoulders, the beer belly, the handlebar moustache now half grey. And then, quite suddenly, time didn't go any further, and the world hung by a thread over the cliff. All of space contracted and then expanded, all at once. The room shrank in so small that all he could hear was his heartbeat echoing off the walls, all he could feel was blood pounding through his temples. The room expanded out into the largest space imaginable, he could see dust motes floating across a beam of light, he could hear the footsteps of Jayne and Zoe as they killed the last of the men outside, he could feel Serenity's feet in the dirt of Poros. In his heart he felt the whole universe shift, just a fraction of an inch, just a hair's breadth. He was a hair's breadth away from the universe he was in before, only a hair's breadth away but now he could never get back there again.

"Delun."

* * *

Silence stretched out long and full like a cat in a sunbeam on a Sunday afternoon. Neither man moved or spoke until the girl gave a wrenching sob through her gag. Mal glanced down at her, and then back up at Delun. Delun broke into a wide smile.

"Yes, yes, son, it's me! C'mon now, we don't have much time. We gotta get this little package outta here! C'mon with me now, I've got a hovercraft in the forest not far."

Thoughts chased each other around in Mal's head. He shook it slightly. He'd think later. He was to the job now. Get the girl, get her safe.

"That… _package_ you got there is named Ellie Withers. Her parents are wantin' her back a mite fierce. Delun, I need you to let me take her home."

"H-, h-, home?" Delun stuttered. "Son, Malcolm… no, no, see, I got plans for this little one. She's so perfect. Everything is going to be so _perfect_ with this one. You'll see what I mean Malcolm, come with me. Come with me and you'll see."

"Look, Delun… we haven't seen each other in awhile now, and I… I… I don't rightly know what you're doin' here but I have to take Ellie here back to her parents. Now if you take your gun away from her head, I'll lower mine and you can let her walk over here, nice and slow."

Delun jolted as if struck. His eyes shifted from side to side rapidly and his chest started heaving with the effort to draw breath.

"No, no, Malcolm. Why don't you understand? This is _mine_" he indicated with the barrel of the gun towards Ellie, "and I _can't_ let it go. I _can't_. This little one… this is what I've been waiting for all this time. This is the _important_ one, I _practiced, _I _waited, _I…" His voice trailed off and then he began again in just a whisper.

"Malcolm, my boy. This is what I've been working towards, all these years since the war. It's my salvation." His voice rose again.

"_God gave me this fate!"_ He began to move the gun more erratically around the girl's head. Mal strived to settle the waving motions.

"I wanna talk with you Delun. Catch up," Mal soothed, "I wanna know what happened to you, Delun. You were like a… you were my… _please_. Please Delun, listen to me. I got a job to do, dong-ma? I got to feed my crew. I don't want to hurt you but I've gotta take her back safe. It's the job. I got a ship now, she's called Serenity. I'd like you to see 'er. So how's about we put our guns away now, go back to my ship, and we can talk 'bout this little predicament."

Mal stood motionless waiting for a response. Delun blinked. Then he opened his mouth into a ragged yell. In one fluid motion he spun the girl's chair around until she was facing him and raised his gun to her throat. And inside a single instant, Mal's world clarified to perfection. He leveled his pistol to Delun's forehead, and pulled the trigger.

Slowly the tension in Mal's chest eased. The pressure behind his eyes faded and his breath returned. Suddenly the fog of the alcohol settled like a dead weight on his overactive neurons, calming his mind enough to think coherently. He began the attempt to console himself. He did the right thing. He did the right thing. He did. The right. Thing. (Didn't he?)

Searching his memories for impossible answers, he saw the faces of Zoe and Jayne as he came down the staircase with his arms wrapped around the girl. He heard Zoe's voice in his mind echoing about the cockpit: "They're all dead sir. Dead or run off. Preacher and the Sheriff have gone to get the horses. It's over, sir."

As Zoe reached out to help Mal support Ellie, the dark house surrounding his mind's eye transmuted into the field where Serenity sat; glowing in the cacophony of reds, oranges, yellows, and browns a sunrise in the Poros autumn had generated. Zoe transmuted as well, into River: walking through a gentle tornado of uprising leaves with arms outstretched, smiling for once a completely open, genuine smile. Its ghost tugged across Mal's face as he remembered Ellie rushing into her arms.

Suddenly it wasn't River holding Ellie but the Withers, and the scene went dark again as his mind shifted to three nights after the raid, when the parents had come to collect their child and the whole town had gathered in Serenity's field to celebrate his crew's heroism. Big damn heroes, indeed. Even while the laughter was echoing merrily in his mind, Mal felt himself pulled away from the memories that soothed his conscience and back to the day after the killings. Standing in the drizzle he'd watched as the men they'd killed the night before were buried in shallow, unmarked graves. Magistrate Ramsey walked up behind Mal, and spoke in an indifferent tone.

"No autopsy was performed on these men, we know what killed them. We've posted a bulletin with the photos of their corpses, but given the… unsavory life they chose to lead I doubt we'll get an ID on any of them."

Standing over the grave he knew to be Delun's, Mal shook his head.

* * *

River's bare feet lovingly touched cool metal. Walking silently to the center of the cargo bay she closed her eyes and inhaled a gentle breath, slowly. Through the pattern of bolts on the floor and the gentle currents of air she felt Serenity's hum around her, in her, and through her. Letting her arms settle to her sides her mind moved outward. She saw the stars off Serenity's front bow, felt the gentle pressure of the air molecules bouncing up against her outer walls, and the strange not-pressure of the vast empty nothingness on the other side. She flowed along for a moment with the carbon dioxide cycling through the ship's air filters, which took her into her lower decks where she switched to the stream of coolant coursing through the engine. For a moment she left the stream and touched the steady, soothing, rhythmic thrum of the machine turning over and over in circles. Suddenly a glimmer of something not engine, of something that probed and examined and tweaked touched her mind. River was pulled out of Serenity swiftly by a whirlwind of curiosity, frustration and creativity accompanied by a deluge of images of various mechanical parts being shifted into different configurations and different iterations over and over again: Kaylee dreaming Kaylee dreams from her hammock in the engine room.

Involuntarily her mind drew back from Kaylee and Serenity, paused, and then flowed outwards again. She touched on the heat and intensity flowing in waves from Book's quarters. His dreams kept his secrets as well; she rarely saw specific images. Instead the power and passionate belief he kept in controlled measures during his waking hours radiated from him like heat and light from a fire while he slept. Next to this white hot stream came her brother's short clipped bursts of facts, information, tidbits, and dark blue and green clumps she could only think of as Rorschach blots that contained anxiety and concern in equal measures. Her brother's worrisome mind was familiar to her and she moved on, hearing Inara's dreams ringing in delicate chimes from her shuttle, looking briefly at Zoe and Wash's trails of deep red and blue thoughts that intertwined like vines amongst one another, and giggling softly at Jayne's straightforward feelings and urges which showed up in a multitude of bright primary colors. What would the mercenary think if he knew that of all the crew his dreams most resembled rainbows?

Suddenly a tsunami of black snuffed out Jayne's thoughts. For a moment River wobbled and spun with the intensity. Snapping back into herself with the shock, she stilled for a moment and then realized she hadn't heard the quiet babble of steady thoughts that sounded like a brook running and looked like walls of brown and ocher. Where was her captain? Curiosity battled fear as her mind expanded outward again.

Without the initial shock the waves were not overwhelming enough to send her mind scurrying back into itself, however, they managed to completely drown out anything else she could sense. With each trough there was a dull sense of pain, and with each crest there was an agony; an agony so strong it took the breath from her throat and the strength from her legs. But as the seconds passed she grew accustomed to the crash of each wave hitting her and she began to see the details within them. Tiny, completely clear gaps were randomly embedded in them; each held a vertigo of bottomless emptiness that crept up on her unseen. Little shapes and swirls began to arise from the waves; within them she saw faces, weapons, black flames. Monsters and ghosts. Standing in the tide long enough she began to isolate their source, the one central point the waves were emerging from: one central point of soft brown embedded in bright rich ocher.

River realized what her mind was showing her and her eyes snapped open to let in the harsh glare of the cargo bay lights. Quickly she walked up the stairs and along the metal catwalk. She strode through the living area and the mess hall despite the waves pushing up against her with more and more strength. Their intensity increased until she stood beneath the thick bulkheads that formed the doorframe of the cockpit and saw the captain. Then with a gasp all of it vanished and she and Mal were left staring at one another.

"Well hello there littl'un," Mal said, "you sure snuck up on me. What're you doin' out of bed at this hour?"

River's pale eyes glanced from Mal's face to the bucket beside his chair and the bottle of alcohol in his hand before returning to meet his gaze. She crossed her arms, tilted her head to the side, wrinkled her nose up at the scent and pursed her lips at him. Mal followed her gaze and caught her meaning.

"Hey now, don't you be payin' me any mind. I's alright. I's just…" he gestured with the bottle in his hand, "I's just celebratin'."

"Your thoughts say otherwise. Your thoughts are loud tonight."

Mal blinked and looked at River. His jaw flexed a few times, working his mouth to try and make the words come.

"Now I don' know what you be seein' in here little one," he said, gesturing with his free hand towards his head, "but I suggest you just goes on to bed now. Don' think your brother would partish – partik - particularilarly like you up a' this hour. And them thoughts of mine pay them no mind. Little ones like you shouldna haf to deal with wha'sin my head."

He raised his eyebrows and shook his head back and forth. "Don' rightly know wha' you'd make of it anyways."

River brought her hands up to the doorframe and leaned into the bulkheads, looking at the captain thoughtfully for a long moment. Just when he was beginning to squirm under her stare, she spoke.

"An autumn night. Don't think your life didn't matter."

Mal blinked in surprise as River turned and walked softly away. His eyes never left her until she reached the end of the hallway and faded from his view, slipping back into the heart of Serenity.


End file.
